About Us

Golden Gate Bridge, San Francisco

Hello! You are here because you want to know more about us. Well, we are Chris and Caline, and this our family travel blog! We have a daughter named Emily and a Boston Terrier named Shelby, and we LOVE to travel (Shelby not so much). We currently live in Brazil and have family both here and in the US, so we are always travelling back and forth. Doing so wouldn’t be possible without the help of points and miles. We started this site to share how our family travels the world for a fraction of the normal cost and how yours can too!

Who Writes for Fly Family Fly?

The majority of the posts on FlyFamilyFly.com will be written by me, Chris. I play the role of husband, father, and points freak of the family. Some other posts will be written by my awesome wife, Caline, when she isn’t trying to take over the world selling Emily’s Bows!

About Us….Who Are We?

Caline Rizzo Hassan: From Petropolis, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Caline’s background is in hospitality and marketing. Currently she is running our crazy household, her family’s retail shops, her bow empire, and some marketing consulting gigs on the side. When she has down time she enjoys sour gummy worms, TV dramas, and afternoon naps…although those are hard to come by these days.

Calines Favorite Part of Travelling (besides seeing new places, etc.): “Watching all the movies on the plane! Oh, and the free wine!”

Christopher Hassan: From Boston, Massachusetts, USA. I studied hospitality at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst with special studies at the Culinary Arts Academy (formerly DCT) in Lucerne, Switzerland. It is at this school in Switzerland where Caline and I met, fell in love, and started our travel addiction. 10 years later we are married, lived on 3 different continents together, and have a beautiful daughter. I love Boston sports, a good adult beverage, and Seinfeld reruns.

Chris’ Favorite Part of Travelling (besides seeing new places, etc.): “Using points and miles to fly first class and stay at five-star hotels for cheap…and the free wine!”

Baby Emily: Born April 2014, holder of 2 passports, owner of Emily’s Bows. Emily had been on over 30 flights before she was 18 months old.

Emily’s Favorite Part of Travelling: She doesn’t know yet, but I would guess it was when she still fit in the bassinet on the plane. It was basically like a lie-flat bed in first class!

Emily Plane Watching at JFK

Why Did We Start This Site?

We love talking about and sharing our trips, if you follow us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat etc. you would know that! We decided to put it all in one spot so that we could share it with more people and hear from other travelers as well.

Tell Me More About Travelling For Free With Points…

When we first moved to Brazil, we quickly realized that spending thousands of dollars every year to fly (coach) back and forth to see friends and family was going to add up quick. That is when I started educating myself on the points game. Thanks to other blogs like ThePointsGuy, MillionMileSecrets, and MommyPoints, I learned that we could be taking these trips for MUCH cheaper, and sometimes even in business or first class just by using points.

My first big points haul was when I got the American Airlines Executive card by Citi…twice in one year. That got us more than 220,000 miles, which is almost SIX roundtrip flights from Rio to Boston. Since then I have been hooked and almost everything I do is with points in mind. I play Facebook games to earn free stuff in Vegas, buy flowers for my mom to earn airline miles, and hand write hundreds of notecards to get free hotel nights!

It may sound crazy at first, but when you can take your family across the world and stay at awesome hotels for almost no out-of-pocket expense….it would be crazy not to.

Pool at the Park Hyatt New York

Ok, I’m Interested. But Why Should I Read YOUR Blog?

As I mentioned earlier, Caline and I both have hospitality backgrounds. We both studied hotel and restaurant management and know the ins and outs of the business. Between the two of us we have held many industry positions (from the bottom up) at four and five diamond properties, including:

Bussing and waiting tables

Bellman

Valet

Concierge

Housekeeper

Front Desk Agent

Front Desk Supervisor (someone got promoted!!!)

Front Office Manager

But the best part is the people we met while working those jobs. We have many friends in all sectors that we reach out to when we have questions about a specific topic.

Combining our formal education, work experience, and flat-out passion for travel, you will be hard pressed to find another couple of travel nuts like us!

Get In Touch!

Want to talk travel? Have a good story to share? Tips? Send us a message!